Nice ta meetcha: Vermont Blogger Meetup Roundup

We had about 25 people show up yesterday afternoon for the Vermont Blogger Meetup — way more than last year's 3-person turnout. It was great to meet everybody and put faces to names (and pen names). It was so cool to see everybody in the same room, talking about, er, whatever it is that bloggers talk about when they get together. I ended up having a  lot of conversations about my partner's pregnancy — she's due in February. And I finally got to chat with Ernesto Burden for a bit about newspapers and new media. Have I mentioned that I'll miss Ernesto when he leaves for New Hampshire? I also found out that the Terrapin Garden folks have moved their Montpelier webcam off of the fire station because they thought that was too morbid a view. And I got to meet "the granny blogger," Pat Hejny, which was a real treat.

For those of you who couldn't make it, a recap: People wandered in until 3:30 or so, and took seats around a big circular table. The circle kept having to expand as more and more people showed up. Then we did a round of introductions, asked a couple questions of the group, like "what content management system does everybody use?" — mostly Blogger, I think? And wordpress/typepad. Then we broke off organically into groups and gabbed. Seemed like folks had a good time. I was going to link to all the reports, but it would take too long. Some enterprising person can do it in the comments.

Thanks, everyone who showed up. And thanks to the Langdon Street Cafe for hosting us. I didn't get a chance to say this at the meetup, but I want to publicly thank Pamela Polston and Paula Routly, the editors and publishers of Seven Days, for helping to make this possible. I'm not sure if you all realize how much they've supported me and my site. I started collecting Vermont blogs before I started blogging for Seven Days, but they gave me a big boost when they agreed to sponsor my efforts last April. They've been giving me a stipend above and beyond my salary to do 802 Online. It's not much, but it's definitely an incentive to do this work, and to do it diligently. They also paid for me to attend a blogging conference in North Carolina last year that inspired me to organize these meetups, and cultivate the local blogosphere, and start my new blogging column.

As far as I can tell, it's pretty rare to have a newspaper get behind blogging this way. The Ps haven't done all this because they're big blog fans — I don't know that either one of them spends much time online outside of work. I realize they support it because they're willing to trust me, and because they're committed to supporting local culture. Also because they're cool.

Picture captions:Pat Hejny and Morgan Brown (wearing "Militant Bloggers for Housing in Vermont" t-shirt); Jessamyn West, displaying her blogger creds from a librarian conference, with her boyfriend Greg in the background; Philip Baruth, Hardy Machia, Sarah Scully and Andrew from A Quick Word from the Far Side of the Galaxy. See more pics here, here, and here.